Tag: Mark Byington

Vanderbilt’s year of upsets is costing the school lots of money for fans storming the field of play

These court storms are getting expensive for Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt’s recent streak of athletic upsets is costing the school more than energy in the celebrations.

Saturday’s 74-69 men’s basketball upset of the No. 9 Kentucky Wildcats led to Commodore fans storming the court at Memorial Gymnasium, the second time that’s happened this month after last Saturday’s upset over Tennessee.

This is the third time Vandy fans have stormed the field of play during this athletic calendar year, the first coming after last fall’s stunning football win over a top-ranked Alabama team.

Well, CBS Sports’ David Cobb and Front Office Sports’ Alex Schiffer calculated that Vanderbilt has racked up $850,000 in fines this year for the three crowd storms because of, per Schiffer, how conference rules function for crowd storm violations.

The first crowd storm in the fall cost Vandy $100,000. The second bumped up the fine to $250,000. Saturday’s will cost the school a whopping $500,000. All fines are paid to the losing school, meaning Kentucky made $500,000 for its troubles.

While the school’s athletic department might enjoy not shelling out any more money for court storming, new Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington sure doesn’t seem to mind seeing this kind of fan enthusiasm.

“There’s big picture things I wanted to happen around here and at one point I want to be where we’re not surprised, that we don’t feel like the underdog in the in these games,” Byington said after Saturday’s upset win, via The Tennessean‘s Aria Gerson.

“And we’re going into them knowing that that our program is good and we expect to win. We’re not there yet. So let the fans enjoy it. We’ve got to start a GoFundMe page or something to pay fines. We’ll figure it out.”

You heard it, Vandy fans. Keep those court storms coming!

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Vanderbilt basketball lands coach who vanquished Wisconsin in NCAA Tournament

James Madison head coach gets new job:

Vanderbilt University’s men’s basketball program is hiring former James Madison University head coach Mark Byington as its next head coach.

The news broke Monday, two days removed from the Dukes’ 72-61 victory over Wisconsin in the first round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

Byington led James Madison to a record-setting 32 wins and the program’s first bid to March Madness in over 40 years. JMU kick-started its 2023-2024 campaign with 14 consecutive triumphs and punched its ticket to the tournament with a win over Arkansas State in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament title game.

On March 23, the 12-seeded Dukes held a lead against No. 5 Wisconsin for the entire contest en route to an 11-tally win. Byington’s group would drop its next game to Duke in the Round of 32, but his postseason run certainly garnered the attention of the Commodores’ decision makers. 

Byington is slated to replace Jerry Stackhouse, a former NBA All-Star. Stackhouse manned Vanderbilt’s sidelines for five seasons and led the Commodores to 22 wins in 2022-2023 without an NCAA Tournament appearance.